There was a man on a business trip and when he checked in he was given one of the middle seats on the airplane. He was tired and he all he wanted to do was sleep, so he got a little bit irritated when the young girl sat next to him started to ask questions: “Mister, do you brush your teeth?” “Yes,” he replied. “That’s good,” she said, “People who don’t - LOSE their teeth.”
Then she asked, “Mister, do you smoke?” “No,” he answered. “Good, because people who DO get sick,” she said.
After a brief silence, she turned to him again, “Mister, do you love Jesus?” “Yes I DO,” he answered. “That’s good,” she added. “People who love Jesus, go to heaven.”
The man was touched by the little girls words, but he settled back into his seat, hoping there would be no more questions. Just then she asked, “Mister…will you ask the man next to you if HE brushes HIS teeth?”
Well, I’m sure you can guess what happened next. And when she came to the question about Jesus, the second man answered, “I’m afraid I don’t understand.” And for the remainder of the flight, the first man got to share his faith with the second man – all because of a little girl with unusual persistence.
If there is one word that is sure to spread fear and dread in any church circle – it's the word ‘Evangelism’. For most Christians, the thought of having to actually ‘share their faith’ with someone, will cause them to break out in a cold sweat!
The average Christian will, over the course of their Christian life (based on 40 or so years):
Attend 2,500 church services
hear 2,500 sermons,
sing over 20,000 songs,
participate in over 10,000 public prayers...
and will lead 0 people to faith in Jesus Christ in the course of their Christian lifetime.
And yet, that's why we’re here, that's why we exist, that is the purpose of the Church – ‘To make Him known to a lost and unbelieving world’!
In his book ‘Transforming your Church’, Mark Connor writes –
The church exists for three primary reasons – to minister to God, to minister to each other, to minister to the world. The interesting thing about these three important ministries is that there is only one that cannot be done in heaven – the third one! In fact if we were only here for the first two reasons, then we might as well go to heaven right now! In heaven it will be so much easier to love God because we’ll see him face to face. In heaven it will be so much easier to love one another, because we’ll be perfect. The only reason that we are still here on earth is that God is longsuffering, not wanting anyone to perish, but all people to have an opportunity to receive eternal life. In heaven, there will be no more evangelism. While we’re on earth, we should mix with the unsaved and cultivate friendships with them. Our life goal should be to go to heaven and take as many people with us as possible. The ministry focus of the Church must change from inreach to outreach – it exists for mission.
‘It exists for mission…’ If we are going to be the church then sharing our faith is not a choice. If we are going to be the Church, then we have to be reaching out with God’s love and sharing the message of Jesus with those that we meet. The truth is – that when you gave your life to Jesus, He commissioned you to be a missionary for him. And where you work, where you live, where you play, are all mission fields that God has placed you in.
So this morning I want to help you be the missionary that God has called you to be. I want to enthuse you to share your faith with those who are ‘not yet Christians’. I want to encourage you - as the Apostle Paul encouraged Timothy ‘to do the work of an evangelist’. You’re not an evangelist – but do the work of an evangelist. And to help us in that task this morning, I want to ask three questions:
1. Question Number One - What is evangelism?
Someone has described it as ‘the sob of God over the world’. Spurgeon defined it as ‘one beggar telling another beggar where to get bread’. But perhaps the most well known and embracing definition of evangelism comes from Archbishop William Temple’s committee on evangelism who came up with this: ‘to evangelise is so to present Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit, that men shall come to put their trust in God through him, to accept him as their Saviour, and serve him as their King in the fellowship of his church’.
That’s a definition of evangelism. Evangelism is about presenting men and women with the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
I heard the story of a bible student – you may have heard it. He went to a bible college not to study for the ministry but just to learn about the bible. He didn’t want to be a preacher. But the other students who were all training to be preachers, decided that they would rope him in and try to encourage him to become a preacher. Once a week they would have a sermon workshop where the students would take it in turns to preach and the others would pass ‘constructive criticism’ on what they had heard.
And so they said to this guy, ‘come now have a go – get up and we’ll be kind to you – and we’ll analyse your sermon’. He wasn’t interested is, but they pressured him. So eventually he stood up and he said, ‘does anyone here know what I am going to say?’ And they said, ‘No’. And he said, ‘neither do I’ and sat back down again to the disappointment of the other students.
And then they thought, ‘we won’t leave it at this. We’ll encourage him next week to get up and try it again’. And they were at him all week and then when the time came they said, ‘come on have another go’. So he stood up and he said, ‘Does anyone know what I’m going to say?’ And they all remembered what had happened the week before when they all said no – so this time they all said ‘yes’. And he said, ‘well, there’s no point me saying it then is there’. And sat back down again.
So they said, ‘well we’ll have another go’. The following week they conferred amongst themselves and they said, ‘now if he does the same thing half of us will say no and half of us will say yes and that will catch him – he’ll have to go on’. So he got up and he said, ‘do any of you know what I am going to say?’ And half of them said yes, and half of them said no. And he said, ‘ well those of you who know go and tell those who don’t’.
Now who can tell me a better definition of evangelism than that? Those of us who know about the truth of the gospel - about the love, the mercy, the grace and the forgiveness of God that can be found through faith in Jesus Christ, those of us who know, telling those who don’t.
2. Question number two – Why should we evangelise? And I’ve written here, ‘we should evangelise because of the awful lost state of mankind’.
Did you know that out of the 741 million people in Europe, they say that 500 million of them have never opened a bible.
In the UK only 6% of the population attend church on a regular basis, 94% of people living in the UK don’t attend church. As a result our nation is in an awful, degraded, fallen state.
I don’t want to get embroiled in the moral arguments for and against – but statistics for the year 2015 show that 15,485 babies were aborted every month in England and Wales, that's an average of 1 every 3 minutes. Over 78,000 abortions in 2015 repeat abortions - 1853 abortions were carried out on girls under 16 years of age – 509 of those were to girls under the age of 15, and 79 of those were to girls under 14.
81% of abortions were carried out on unmarried mothers.
A staggering 98% of abortions were performed on the grounds that the pregnancy would have an ‘adverse affect on the mothers mental health’. Or in other-words as an alternative form of contraception.
The UK has the worst record for teenage pregnancies in Europe - the teenage birth rates are almost twice as high as Germany and France and six times as high as the Netherlands.
Almost 150,000 marriages collapse in England and Wales every year. 6000 children every week become casualties of broken down marriages.
Listen to what the bible says about the state of mankind:
They are like sheep without a shepherd – Mt 9:36
They are lost – Lk 19:10
They are condemned – Jn 3:18
They are blinded in their minds for the god of this age, the devil, has blinded their minds so that the glorious light of the gospel of Christ cannot shine into their darkness – 2 Cor 4:4
They are dead in sin – Eph 2.
They are without hope – Eph 2:12
We need to evangelise because of the awful, hopeless state of mankind. And their only hope is found in the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
3. Question 3 – How do we evangelise?
And to answer that question I want us to look at how Philip did it in Acts Chapter 8. Because when Philip introduces the Ethopian Eunuch to Jesus – he does it God’s way. Philip was NOT one of the Apostles like Peter, James and John. Philip was NOT a missionary like Paul. Philip was not a pastor like Timothy. Philip was a deacon, he was a servant of the Church. But he was a man who was filled with the Spirit of God. And every time we see him in the Bible, he’s sharing his faith. In fact right before our main text this morning, we find Philip preaching to the Crowds in Samaria and he’s leading many people to faith.
But Philip was no different to you or to me – he was just an ordinary, average man who just couldn’t keep God to himself. And that is how God works - God makes Himself known, He reaches people – through average, everyday folk like us.
The Ethiopian was on a (spiritual) journey
The first thing I want you to notice is that this Ethiopian was already on a journey. He had been to Jerusalem and was now returning home. But he wasn’t just on a physical journey, he was on a spiritual journey. Verse 27-28 says that there was, ‘an Ethiopian eunuch, an important official in charge of all the treasury of the Kandake (which means ‘Queen of the Ethiopians’). This man had gone to Jerusalem to worship, and on his way home was sitting in his chariot reading the Book of Isaiah the prophet’.
This man was a man of power, this man was a man of position, this man was a man of influence, this man was a man of wealth. And yet despite all that, there was an emptiness inside, there was a need so great, that no amount of affluence or influence could satisfy the longing of his heart. This longing was so great, this emptiness so real, that he was prepared to travel over 1,500 miles to find fulfilment.
He had heard that the true God – the one who could satisfy every need, who could fill every longing - was to be found in Jerusalem. So he goes there to worship, searching for truth, searching for hope, searching for fulfilment. But when he got there all he found was the materialism, the hypocrisy, the intolerance, and the deadness of Judaism and he left empty and as unfulfilled, and now he was heading back home no closer to salvation than when he first arrived.
But the point is this – this man was already on a spiritual journey. There was something already stirring within him, he possessed a spiritual hunger deep inside, the spirit of God had already began to work in this mans life long before he had an encounter with Philip.
Everyone of you here today, if you’re a born again Christian, have been on a spiritual journey. We don’t just wake up one day and believe in Jesus – there’s a process, there’s a journey, as God uses different circumstances and different people to work and move in our lives.
The apostle Paul says, ‘I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God made it grow’. This Ethiopian was on a spiritual journey, God was already at work in his life. And that's important, and it brings me onto my second point.
Philip was Sensitive to God’s Leading Verse 26 – ‘Now an angel of the Lord said to Philip…’
Now we don’t know what this angel looked like. We don’t know if there was some kind of physical manifestation that appeared in front of him with wings, and halo’s, and harps. We don’t know if it was just some person that Philip bumped into in the street – the bible tells us that angels can appear in human form. We don’t know if it was just a voice that he heard inside his head.
But we do know that there was a prompting from heaven. And Philips prayer life was such that he was sensitive to God’s voice. Philips walk with God was such that he could recognise Gods prompting no matter what form it came.
I worked for a few years with an organisation called SASRA – their primary role is the evangelism of our Armed Forces. And many of my colleagues worked with the philosophy that everyone they met got the gospel, whether they wanted it or not! Every conversation was turned around to God and salvation. But the result was, when soldiers saw them coming – they would often turn and walk in the opposite direction as fast as they could.
Many churches have the philosophy that evangelism involves standing on street corners preaching at people, or going around the local estate ‘cold calling’ and inviting people they've never met before to the next Alpha course.
That kind of evangelism only serves to do more damage than good – Jesus calls it ‘casting pearls before swine’. We have to be sensitive to God’s prompting. We need to have our ears tuned to hear His voice. We need to look out with spiritual eyes and see where God is already at work in people’s lives.
And before you think I’m giving you an excuse not to evangelise let me just say that God is already at work in the lives of people around you. And if you aren’t already receiving a ‘prompting’ it isn’t because God isn’t prompting… its because – you’re heart and mind and spirit is closed to God. Who has God put in front of you? Because God is putting someone in front of you – a friend, a family member, a work colleague…
Pray that God will open your eyes and make you sensitive to his prompting.
Philip was obedient - Verse 26, ‘The angel said to Philip, ‘Go south to the road… that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza’. So he started out…’
Philip was enjoying a fruitful ministry in Samaria, he was preaching to the crowds and many people were coming to faith. But then God spoke to him, led him away from the crowds, away from the market place, away from the town, to a lonely dirty road in the middle of nowhere. And Philip didn't question, he didn't hesitate, he obeyed – and his obedience changed one mans life completely.
The Angel said to Philip ‘Go’, and Philip went… Jesus said to his disciples ‘go, I am sending you’. He said, ‘Go into the highways and byways and compel them to come in’, He said, ‘Go into all the world and preach the gospel’. And you know that little mono-syllable ‘Go’ can make all the difference to whether the church is alive or dead.
The early Methodists were nicknamed ‘the go preachers’, because they didn’t just sit in their churches waiting for people to miraculously appear, they went out into the streets and the market places and they preached the gospel of Jesus Christ to the people where they were. A biographer of John Wesley wrote at the end of his book, ‘John Wesley was out of breath pursuing the souls of the lost’. I can think of any greater epitaph to have on your gravestone - ‘Here lies Paul Green – he was out of breath pursuing the souls of the lost. ‘
Not only do we have to be sensitive to God’s prompting, but we have to be obedient to his leading and we need to be prepared to go to the people and to the places that he sends us.
Philip’s witness was based firmly in the truth of Scripture
The final thing I want to say is that Philip’s witness was based firmly in the truth of Scripture. The Ethiopian Eunuch was reading from Isaiah and verse 35 says, ‘Philip, beginning with that very passage of Scripture told him the good news about Jesus’.
In just a few short years the apostles were able to evangelise the whole know world, and hundreds of thousands of people came to faith and the reason they were able to do that was because they were Jesus Preachers and they were bible preachers. If you do a quick study through the book of Acts you will find that every time the apostles opened their mouths huge chunks of scripture came pouring out.
And I really do want to warn against watering the Gospel down, and trying to make it a little more palatable for people to swallow. And we are living in a day when it is getting watered down quite a bit.
Hebrews 4 says, ‘For the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double edged sword. It penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart’. But when you water the scriptures down, when you change them to make them ‘politically correct’, then you will blunt the sword. And of what use is a sword with no edge.
Conclusion
There's a story of a Sri Lanken pastor who was pastoring a church in Sydney, Australia. His name was Bernard Disaniaka. Every year Bernard would attend the National Conference in Adelaide, but he doesn’t have much money, so when he is in Adelaide he always catches a bus each morning to the conference.
One morning a thought entered his head – catch a taxi. The taxi driver asked him ‘are you going to the conference?’, ‘Yes, I am’, ‘Are you a Christian’, ‘Yes, I am’, Where are you from? ‘I come from Sydney’. ‘Oh’, said the taxi driver, ‘I have a sister who lives in Sydney, she isn’t very well. If I gave you her address do you think you could pay her a visit’. ‘Of course’, said Bernard, ‘where does she live’? ‘She lives in William Street, Granville’. Bernard said, ‘I live in William Street, Granville’.
How many taxis are there in Adelaide? 6 or 7 thousand perhaps. How many streets in Sydney – 4 or 5 million? You see, the thought ‘ catch a taxi’ came from heaven. But Bernard didn’t catch any old taxi, he catches the one whose driver just happened to have a sister who lives in the same street as the pastor and needs someone to visit.
Bernard knocked on her door. Her name was Dagmar, she had been in a broken relationship, she was drinking a bottle of whisky a day. She never opened the curtains because the day depressed her. She had two dogs, but she never let them out, the house was filthy and foul. She had given up on life. Then this little Sri Lanken pastor knocks on her door and says, ‘God has told me to come and tell you that he loves you’. A few months after that, he had the pleasure of baptising her.
'Evangelism is the sob of God over the world'. I want to say that God loves people, no matter who they are, no matter what they have done, no matter what their background. God loves people and he calls his church – he calls you and he calls me to love them too. But don’t do your evangelism with a scatter gun affect – you know hit everyone you meet with the gospel in the hope that someone might be affected.
• Look for those who are already on a spiritual journey
• Be sensitive to God’s prompting
• Be obedient to God’s leading
• Keep your witness based in Bible truth.
‘The fields are ripe unto harvest – but the workers are few. Ask that the lord would send out workers into the harvest field, and pray that we might be numbered amongst them.’
